All 41 workers rescued from Uttarkashi tunnel
All the 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarkashi in the state of Uttarakhand after it collapsed on November 12 were rescued on Tuesday, after 16 days inside.
They were working on the Char Dham Yatra Pariyojana, a massive road-widening project which has courted controversy right from its beginning because of the fragile nature of the Himalayan mountain range which needs to be blasted through for widening of the roads. Similar incidents have occurred earlier in the project too.
The workers were brought out through a pipe, which could be laid after rat-hole miners had dug a tunnel through the debris.
Over the 16 days since the incident, various mechanical ways tried out to drill through to the workers failed because the machines broke down. It were the brave rat-hole miners and their manual digging which ultimately bore results.
